On the brink of a new basketball season, top-ranked Indiana has lost freshmen Hanner Mosquera-Perea (pictured) and Peter Jurkin for nine game each for accepting impermissible benefits, the NCAA and Indiana announced Tuesday.
“While in high school, Jurkin and Perea accepted approximately $6,000 and $8,000, respectively, in impermissible benefits from an Indiana University booster,” the NCAA announced in a statement. “These benefits included plane tickets, meals, housing, a laptop, cell phone and clothing. Jurkin will be required to repay $250 to a charity of his choice. Perea must repay approximately $1,590 to charity. In determining the amount of repayment, the staff considered the mitigation presented by the university.”
Indiana announced that each player will be “withheld from the first nine games of this basketball season.”
Mosquera-Perea is a 6-8 forward from LaPorte, Ind., and Jurkin is a 7-foot center from Sudan. Indiana already lost veteran Derek Elston when he injured his knee Oct. 24. He could miss the first two months of the season.
“What I can say about that is that we go through a lot in a program,” Hoosiers head coach Tom Crean told reporters Thursday night. “There’s situations that are always going to arise and every one of them has got a process to it. And we’re in the middle of that process. We just are. That’s the extent of it.”
Indiana will compete in the Legends Classic in Brooklyn Nov. 19-20, along with UCLA, Georgetown and Georgia.
